Just a friendly reminder, prompted by a recent thread elsewhere, where a station was asking how or if he needed to revalidate his licence as he had "forgotten" how long he had had it!
There are currently, despite several anouncements on various forums, and on the RSGB website, within Radcom, as well as Ofcoms site itself,
significant amounts of licences that have technicaly "expired" having gone well past their 5 year "sell by date"!
I am sure there must be many happily "CQing" away, oblivious to the fact they are in law, and technicaly, "unlicenced"!
Of course some could have gone SK, or progressed, and no longer wish to continue earlier ones etc., but I am sure that there must be many that have simply "forgotten".
Might be worth a sort through all those old scraps of paper, shack drawers, and such,to dig out the old "log in details" for the Ofcom licensing and re-validation site, and get yourself a new "5 year stamp of approval"

Every time a thread like this pops up I simply revalidate, it doesn't matter that it's not due and you can revalidate every day if you wanted to as the validation lasts for 5 years from your last validation.

CB since '85
AR since '91
Ex-RAF

If you get just a YES or NO answer it will mean either you should already know the answer or you have proved yourself incapable of understanding the answer. Also if you think I need to explain what I type then perhaps you should realise your own limitations

A quick bit of reassurance. Your licence doesn't become somehow 'invalid' nor do you become illegal by not revalidatng. You DO, however, gove Ofcom a reason to revoke the licence (for not revalidating), if they chose to do so. Also, up-to-date licence details means that Ofcom's job of manging the spectrum is easier and other Amateurs know where stations are (hold on; I'm starting to sound like a regulator; that won't do at all). So, you're tecnically in breach of your licence by not revalidating but you are legal to operate until or unless the licence is actually revoked by Ofcom or you surrender it.

I remember calling up and asking about this when I was first licensed... I can't remember exactly what I was told now but one thing that stuck in my head was that the person I spoke to mentioned something about licenses that had not been validated for five years or longer being automatically revoked every so often. I took this to mean that they would revoke batches of un-validated licenses periodically, although I may have got the wrong end of the stick.

There were no five year old lifetime licenses back then either, so I guess it may not have been clear to everyone internally at Ofcom what would happen moving forward.

southgatearc.org wrote:
It is understood about 10,000 amateur radio licences will be in the first batch set to be revoked by Ofcom

Prior to the introduction of the lifetime licence in December 2006 licences had expired if not renewed annually. After 2006 Ofcom were still able to cancel lifetime licences if requested by the holder but it appears a process was not in-place to enable them to revoke an amateur licence.

If Ofcom wishes to revoke a wireless telegraphy licence, it must follow these steps:
• notify the licensee of the reasons for which it proposes to revoke the licence;
• specify a period in which the licensee may make representations;
• decide whether or not to revoke the licence within one month of the end of that period; and
• notify the holder of its decision within a week of making it.

The first batch to be revoked will comprise Amateur Radio Licences which were due to be revalidated between September 2012 and January 2013, both months being inclusive. Ofcom will be using the last known postal address held on file for correspondence with the holder.

10k in the first round - it is like I said, I think the number of active hams is a lot less than the RSGB think.

Mine was expired for about a year. I was inactive and totally forgot to revalidate. I actually got an email from Ofcom reminding me that I hadn't re-validated which just so happened to coincide with me getting back on the air.

I re-validated with no issues.

I will not be commanded, I will not be controlled.
n+1 the formula for working out how many radios you need with n being the current amount.